Keystone Kops

by 8 Degrees of Latitude

Hector’s Bali Diary, May 11, 2016

His fortnightly diet of worms and other non-religious experiences

Exactly what went wrong on May 2, when the police arrived in strength at a location to arrest a French citizen, a man publicly known to be seriously mentally disturbed, needs to be fully explained. It hadn’t been explained in any satisfactory form, let alone fully, when this edition of the Diary hit deadline (update: or since).

The police were armed, as such posses generally are, and properly so in the circumstances. It was later stated that they had been issued with rubber bullets. This is a misnomer. A “rubber bullet” is a disabling round, not an eraser-soft object. They can certainly kill, though this is not the object of their use. A policeman was fatally stabbed. Live (lethal) rounds were then fired. The offender was then slain in circumstances that were both desolate and unnecessary. He was said to have been shot 14 times, including according to reports with final bullet through the head as he lay on the ground – by that time more than likely mortally wounded, but certainly immobilised – surrounded by his executioners.

It was a sickening spectacle, a videoed object lesson in precisely how not to set about enforcing the law. The Indonesian authorities should be thoroughly ashamed of these events. They wish their country to be respected. Bombast and bullets won’t earn respect. A foreign citizen is dead in shocking circumstances. Any element of legitimate self-defence fled the field when an ill-disciplined and panicky squad of uniformed killers opened fire. Leadership, fire control and every principle of policing was absent.

The man concerned was a mentally disturbed menace. This was very widely known. He could and certainly should have been detained, put in a straitjacket, and been taken away by the men in the white coats long before the incident in which he killed a policeman and then met his own death. His whereabouts were hardly secret. A little work by the police would have found him; and a little planning would have produced an arrest operation that did not immediately descend into fatal farce.

The French authorities deserve full explanations of all the circumstances that led to these events, and not just those that immediately came to public notice via social media. The police and the national authorities must provide these explanations. It’s in Bali’s interest that they do so too. Public executions are not what tourists come here to see.

Aussie Break

We’ve just spent a week on Australia’s eastern seaboard, the Diary’s home territory and somewhere that resonates deep in our psyche. It was an unscheduled trip. An old friend, a former politician, had a Big 60 birthday and we were invited to join around 300 of his nearest and dearest for the party. So who could resist? The trip also provided an opportunity to attend to some urgent business that had suddenly arisen and which needed to be placed on the agenda swiftly.

Time was tight and some of the things we’d normally have on our to-do list had to be forgone, but we’ll certainly be back in fairly short order. It’s less than six hours to and from Brisbane, where the sun rises gently from an ocean horizon, which we find is a better, less glary way to run your day than that fiery sunset plunge into the briny that you get in Bali’s southern suburb, Perth.

But it’s great to be home again on our favourite smaller island.

We flew with Jetstar. We do not record this so that critics such as those who like to pretend that they don’t bother to read the Diary, but who plainly do, can bleat again about the ethics of providing free publicity in return for special benefits. We’ve never done that. We pay our own way.

We mention Jetstar only in order to remark that the Boeing 787 is a great aircraft. If you pay for “forward” seating in economy you get to turn left when you board the plane, which reminds you of earlier, plusher, days on other (full service) airlines, for example such as Qantas, Jetstar’s big bwother (or is that thister?) when you were headed for Business Class.

It also reduces the quota of squalling infants and badly behaved toddlers travelling under the notional control of their uncaring, incompetent, or exhausted parents (poor devils) who blight other parts of the cabin.

Bovine Manure

Some things make you laugh. Others give you instant nausea. Sometimes, in a rare confluence of the risible and the reprehensible, you get a sick laugh. So it is with the recent comment of the religious affairs minister that corruption cannot be blamed on the corruptors but on their wives.

Lukman Hakim Saifuddin says that the sins of avarice and greed by which, he concedes, self-important males enrich themselves, flow not from their own grasping malfeasance but from a desire to compensate their wives and families for the long hours and absences that their high service to the nation demand.

There’s a word for that: Bullshit.

Top Marx

We were browsing recently and reminded ourselves of an 1844 quotation from Karl Marx that sums up his philosophy rather well. It seemed apt in the light of the item above, even though it was not directly relevant. Here it is:

“What Is Human Becomes Animal: It is true that labour produces for the rich wonderful things — but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces — but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty — but for the worker, deformity. It replaces labour by machines — but some of the workers it throws back to a barbarous type of labour, and the other workers it turns into machines. It produces intelligence — but for the worker idiocy, cretinism.

The direct relationship of labour to its produce is the relationship of the worker to the objects of his production. The relationship of the man of means to the objects of production and to production itself is only a consequence of this first relationship — and confirms it.

When we ask, then, what is the essential relationship of labour, we are asking about the relationship of the worker to production. As a result, therefore, man (the worker) no longer feels himself to be freely active in any but his animal functions — eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc. And in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal.”

Bali charity Solemen (the link here is to a film by Adithio Noviello, who has also made visual media for the Bali Animal Welfare Association) was the brainchild of philanthropist Robert Epstone and does a great job helping those who cannot help themselves. And so it is with their regular monthly Fun Days for children. In March, for example, Solemen visited Waterbom in Kuta, which is rightly regarded as a fantasyland for children, as well as for adults who are kids at heart.

Solebuddies of all ages visited Waterbom from Denpasar, Klungkung, Sanur and Ubud. Every child came with their unique situation and conditions, from cerebral palsy to Down Syndrome, but such things were pushed into the background on the day and the focus was on fun and frivolity.

Solemen’s Fun Days are made possible by the help and support of generous businesses and individuals. The March Fun Day was sponsored by Waterbom; Zappaz, which provided a delicious lunch; the Bali Dynasty, which supplied towels; and Paradise Property, which supplied transport.

Trying Hard

You do try, really, to put a positive note into your Bali commentaries. No, really. It’s a great place with many more positives than negatives, if you look for them. You must just remember to discount bureaucracy as any sort of starter for the tick list.

So it is with the new system for screening incoming checked baggage at Ngurah Rai’s international terminal. That’s now done before it appears on the carousel for collection. And that’s fine. It’s a better way of doing things than the melee-making x-ray screening point that used to create chaos at the exit from the baggage hall.

Except that it isn’t. They’ve simply shifted the focus of the chaos. It now takes place out of sight while passengers work on their hypertension waiting at carousels that go round and round bereft of baggage for far too long and carries only a forlorn makeshift sign on a piece of red board that says delays are for baggage inspection and customs reasons. The sign apologises for the delays. Are these delays permanent? If so, it would be better to put up a permanent sign.

It can certainly be said, as a general defence against criticism, that airports worldwide are significantly challenged when it comes to producing customer interface congeniality. Brisbane Airport’s massive clearance queues for arriving passengers were a disgrace early on Apr. 27, for example. Though that’s not an airport management issue. It’s another Border Farce. The Aussies are good at those.

But if Bali’s airport wishes to retain its apparent position as one of the best around (we’d love to analyse the questionnaires on which that rating was delivered, but never mind) then someone at Angkasa Pura I should forget about gazing at the gold stars for a moment and trot out to look at the shemozzle.

They might also look at the contract performance on the resurfacing of the runway. This essential work has been interfering with flight schedules in exactly the way it was promised it wouldn’t.

Hector’s Diary is published edited for newspaper production in the fortnightlyBali Advertiser.